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Its like getting misgendered every second of the day.
But her sadness isnt just a bit.
Still, Chu insisted, she had the right to get it whether it cured her dysphoria or not.
Nearly a year after the surgery, she says shes feeling more miserable than shed expected.
Its perversely vindicating, she adds with a wry smile.
Its very dangerous to get what you want.
The piece had its critics, but many hailed it as a revelation.
Maybe Ive died and gone to trans heaven, she wrote on Facebook.
My work begins with a frustration about how that defensiveness has calcified into a trope, she explains.
(I get criticized for projecting a lot, she says dryly.)
In Chus usage, female is a universal existential condition, defined by submitting to someone elses desires.
A top, says Chu, is just a bottom folded into another shape.
So why does she insist on calling a universal condition female?
Because everyone already does, she writes.
Women are the select delegates of this state of being.
Growing up in Asheville, North Carolina, Chu was well trained in repression.
Her parents were conservative Presbyterians.
Lots of praying in public, she recalls.
I dont think he would even refer to himself as a person of color, she says.
One of the few places she felt free was onstage.
Within a week, shed bought her first bra.
It was easily the most impulsive thing Ive ever done, she says.
She takes me by the Buffalo Exchange where she sold off her mens clothes.
We linger in front of her old apartment where she first emerged into the world dressed in womens clothing.
It was the happiest Ive ever been, she says of the weeks after she transitioned.
It was like having a crush on myself.
It would be like an indescribable, tentacular nightmare.
And yet shes almost amused by the tragedy of it.
We tell ourselves the object compels us.
But its desire itself that compels us.
It is by nature gratuitous and without purpose.
The infinite desire to desire.
*An earlier version of this piece misstated the publication date of the On Liking Women.
